Tony Allen reminded us yesterday that courtside NBA cameramen have one of the more dangerous gigs in sports broadcasting.

They’re normally only two or three feet off the court, and prone to flying players, errant balls, and Jack Nicholson. Yuck. But last night, a cameraman was the whipping boy for Tony Allen, who, after he was hit with a foul call, hit a cameraman on the baseline.

From my vantage point, it looks like Tony Allen wanted to slap an inanimate object (a camera) out of frustration, but forgot that there’s a person attached to that camera. So when the camera was slapped, it clocked the operator in the face. It was all pretty stupid.

Here’s the tape:

While it didn’t seem malicious, it did seem plenty stupid, and one can expect that Tony Allen will get hit with a stern punishment for taking his anger out on a guy just doing his job, if only to send a message to other players.